In ’94 we did a 3d interface to Lycos where the search results were returned as a 3d model spinning around (groan) a globe. Results were shown as Cubes, Cones, Spheres and Cylinders, indicating whether the sites linked to were commercial, educational, service providers or others respectively. The size of the object represented the relevance and the color represented location, green for sites registered within the US and red for outside. The objects were slowly spinning and the speed of spin of the object represented size of document. Large documents spun slower.
The problem was that this was a toy, no matter how seductive the idea of 3 dimensional or graph based representations of search results, a list of text results is more useful for all but a handfull of specialist applications.
That is the problem I have with this and other attempts to create visual maps of search results.
The web produced some very sophisticated interfaces early on (remember Onlive Traveller) but simple interfaces are the winning formula, just ask Google.